


a pleasant game of chess

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Chess, Daisy Johnson Centric, Future Fic, Gen, Mentions of Coulson - Freeform, POV Nick Fury, quake - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 15:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7366561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The former Director of SHIELD and the leader of the Inhumans have a secret meeting - to play chess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a pleasant game of chess

“That’s not a very American opening,” he says, when she picks up an unexpected pawn.

The young woman with sleepless-dark around her eyes fixes him a smug look, like a cat used to playing with its food. It looks a lot like the pictures on the news, but also she doesn’t. It looks like the woman on his files, but she doesn’t.

“I do classic Soviet,” she says. “I thought that should be in my file.”

Fury shakes his head.

He can tell she is scanning every corner of the park with her peripheral vision. There is agent training in that, but Fury detects something else, something SHIELD can’t teach you.

Fury looks down at the chessboard, not really thinking about it, thinking about something else, the anonymous tip to the police last weekend about that warehouse in New Jersey, a shipment of black market weapons going to one of those radical groups that formed in the wake of the dissolution of the Watchdogs.

“Just because you wear those sunglasses don’t think I can’t tell what moves you’re thinking of playing,” Johnson says, catching his distraction.

Fury knows. He feels tempted to say: that’s on your file too. Uncanny intuition or some hyperbole like that. Coulson is fond of grandiose language. And is fond of his agents. Fury normally wants to check for himself. So far so uncanny.

“Why did you pick this place?” he asks. He was the one to contact her, but she was the one to set the conditions - first one, he couldn’t tell anyone he was going to meet her. Meaning he couldn’t tell Coulson. Second, she picked the place. Fury was expecting something more covert. They are both fugitives in a way. From what he heard she could give her some pointers on that. 

He finds it unnerving that, that with the care she has put in avoiding detection as Quake and with at least three different government agencies hunting her down (and that includes her former teammates), she seems completely unconcerned that Fury might use this encounter to simply handcuff her and bring her in.

He wonders if he even could.

But more than that, Daisy Johnson seems to know he won’t even try.

“I spent a lot of time here in the summers, after dropping out,” she tells him, looking up at the tall trees giving them some pleasant shade.

“Playing for money,” he guesses. There are things that are in her file. Things he would have known immediately if he had met her before - it’s in her eyes. He kind of regrets not having met her before.

“It’s nice to sleep on the grass when the sun shines, and the public library is close by,” the girl says a bit wistfully. “And if I end up collecting some cash in the process…” She moves another pawn. “My main game is pool, though.”

It almost sounds like a challenge. He doubts Quake can just walk into a bar and spend a couple of hours by the pool table without anyone noticing her.

“If you beat me I’ll contribute ten dollars to the Quake fund. And you can upgrade your wigs.”

She freezes a second upon hearing the name the media has given her; it’s not a kind or admiring name. They chose _Quake_ in fear.

Then her face completely changes, easily (that’s not something SHIELD taught her, either; Fury wonders if SHIELD is responsible for anything other than the powerful muscles in her arms and legs, obvious to him even under the leather jacket and the jeans. She smiles and looks offended and strokes the ends of her red hair with pride.

“I’ll have you know, _this one_ cost me eighteen dollars.”

“It looks like it,” he teases her.

“Ah.”

In the meantime he loses another pawn.

The girl is aggressive.

She doesn’t play defense. She doesn’t look like she knows how to. Maybe they have something in common, after all, Fury wonders.

“My grandfather taught me to play,” he says, uncharacteristically assaulted by some old, sweet memories.

“That’s really nice,” the young woman says. She sounds like she means the word _nice_ , which is strange in this day and age. “The orphanage had a computer lab. The only game they had in there was chess.”

He watches her shrug, almost imperceptible.

“Now that’s not a very Russian move,” he comments.

The girl smiles.

“I’ve been studying the classics,” she says, not waiting for him to retrieve his lost knight from the board and doing it herself. “Liu Wenzhe. I’m pretty sure he was Inhuman too.”

She probably can’t see it but Fury arches one eyebrow at the idea. Inhumans through history. They have enough trouble with the Inhumans living right now. But that’s on Johnson’s file as well. An affinity for making connections where no one else had found a connection.

There are things not on her file (well, maybe in the writing between the lines). The oppressive feeling that she doesn’t have anyone to count on. That she has to do everything on her own.

That’s why I’m here, Fury thinks. He is thinking about the latest anti-Inhuman attack, about the nineteen year old boy in the hospital in Chicago.

He should be getting to the matter of it. Playing a game of chess in the park is fun but both him and the young woman have jobs to do.

He feels a bit wooden, awkwardly twitchy about changing the subject, one of the downsides of being underground for years. You don’t really talk to strangers much.

“Agent Johnson,” he starts.

“That’s not - not _agent_.”

“That’s what my file says. Coulson hasn’t updated the designation. He still writes Agent in every report.”

She shakes her head.

“That makes sense,” she says, sounding frustrated with the man. “He still calls you _Director_. Every time.”

Fury is not sure he likes that. It still stings, having to give up SHIELD. He still feels like he had things to do in that role, and that every catastrophe fallen without him at his post is on him. But there was a reason why he is not Director anymore - just like there is a reason why the woman in front of him is not _Agent_ Johnson anymore.

“How did you do it?” she asks.

“What?”

“Being away from people,” she replies, obviously talking about her own situation right now. “I know you were only technically dead to us for like a couple of days, but then…”

“It was a really long couple of days,” he says.

Johnson smiles, like she understands.

He is thinking about Natasha. Rationally he still understands the necessity of what he did, but letting Natasha believe he was dead is something he has come to regret.

“You never gave me the chance to thank you, by the way,” Johnson is saying now.

“For what?”

“Saving my friends,” she tells him. “Coulson. FitzSimmons. They’re alive because of you.”

He’s a bit uncomfortable upon hearing that and Johnson is watching him like she knows she would get that reaction. Now he’s the one changing the subject.

He takes a paper bag out his pocket and slides it past the defeated chess pieces onto her side of the table.

“What is this?”

“It’s not a sandwich,” Fury says.

Johnson rolls her eyes, a gesture both tellingly youthful and like she regards Fury as a kid who’s just said something stupid.

She takes out the object, and Fury watches as she stares at it with familiar recognition.

“You really like these things, don’t you?” she asks, turning the cube between her fingers with stunning dexterity, like a pickpocket.

“It’s coded to your DNA,” Fury explains. Johnson widens her eyes. “Some safe houses not on any government’s list. Funds. Some other resources.”

Fury smiles a bit to himself, but not at her reaction. Not so long ago he was swearing to do anything to protect the earth from alien threats, going to some very extreme limits for it. Now he’s helping a bunch of alien-blooded official threats escape detection. And they say people can’t change…

“This is not your fight,” Johnson says, a little defiant, like he is intruding.

“I’m not fighting,” Fury replies, holding up his arms a bit. In any case Johnson has his Queen cornered and has proven a better player than him, it’s time to surrender. “Consider it a gift from the former Director of SHIELD to the leader of the Inhumans.”

She looks away, something darkening her glance.

“I’m not - I’m not leading them,” she clarifies, apprehensive, like there’s something dangerous in the word _leader_.

“Yet,” Fury nudges.

She rolls her eyes a bit, again. A hint of embarrassment. Then she changes gears again, shifting the focus away from herself. She’s a textbook example. That was on her file too. 

“You know, it’s a pity you’re officially a dead man,” she says, leaning over the chessboard. “The way things are in the world right now… People could use someone like you.”

He has been thinking about that. Being a ghost is almost too easy, too comfortable.

But this is not the moment to create the habit.

“It would only create more distrust in the public,” he states.

“I see what you mean,” Johnson says. “Still. Pity.”

“It’s time for me to go,” he announces, lifting his sunglasses a moment. “I’ll keep my eye on you.”

Johnson actually looks _delighted_ at his old joke.

“Okay, but check-mate,” she says, pointing at the clear path her remaining Bishop had to Fury’s King, which Fury somehow had opened without noticing. “You owe me ten dollars.”

Fury groans, taking out his wallet.

“When he hired you I told Coulson you were a risk,” he says.

Johnson seems to take that as a compliment.

It is.

He gets up.

“Hey,” Johnson calls as he is about to turn to leave. 

“What?”

She gestures towards the chessboard.

“I’ll let you get a rematch someday, _Director_.”


End file.
